Saturday, April 14, 2012

Cheat to max out your Dropbox referral space

I love dropbox. It has really helped me synchronize important files between computers, while making an online backup of everything. But because the 2 gb free space that you get on a basic account isn't enough for me, I've been looking for ways to increase it. Of course there are the normal ways to increase your dropbox space, described here. You can get 16 gb extra space by referring 32 people, but this is hard to do if you're friendless like me. I found a way to cheat the referral system here and here. The steps on these pages seem a bit outdated though, so I decided to rewrite it a bit according to my own experiences. Who knows, maybe it can help someone.

Let me start by saying that if you have friends that could use dropbox, you should really just get them to try it out. If you have the money (and aren't a cheapskate like me), just pay for a pro account. If you're afraid of getting your account banned, don't do this either.

8. Run dropbox. On the startup screen, choose "I already have a dropbox account".

9. Make a snapshot of the current state. (In the virtualbox menu: Machine -> Take Snapshot)

10. Use your referral link to sign up for a dropbox account. You don't have to use an existing email address to sign up, it will just accept anything that looks like one. You can either do this step in your normal OS or in virtualbox itself.

11. Enter the email address and password of the account that you just created. Click forward. Now you should've gained 500 mb extra space on your original dropbox account.

12. Close the virtual box and return it to the snapshot (Machine -> Close -> Power off Machine & select Restore current snapshot)

13. In the virtualbox manager, start the virtual machine again by pressing start.

Repeat steps 10-13. It should only take a few minutes per referral, so it's fast enough to do once you've set it up.

EDIT: As suggested in the comments, you can try a combination of these solutions between every try if it doesn't work for you:
-change the mac address of the virtual machine
-change your IP address
-boot back to the live cd and continue from step 5

Please stop spamming this post with referral links.

EDIT2: Maybe you should consider using Copy instead of Dropbox. Copy offers 15 GB of free space and 5 GB per referral. If you sign up using a referral link, you also get 5 GB extra space to start with. Here is my referral link if you're interested.

I tried this using VMWare but I think they are checking mac addresses now; I get an error in my dropbox under referrals: "Ineligible- This invite looks sketchy!This usually happens if you sign up for multiple accounts on the same computer"

Use the link for sharing on social media sites rather than sending out emails.Save the link in a text file on the VM's desktop.Open the link in an internet browser.Put in a valid email address (it does not have to be installed, just has to be a valid email address that doesn't already have a Dropbox account registered to it) and you will get the space straight away.Shut down the VM and under network settings replace a couple of numbers and letters in the MAC address field and repeat process with a new email address.Dropbox will think it's a new computer.

Any fix for ineligible issue? This method is not working anymore, but there are guys at fiverr doing 4-5 referrals in a minute, I wonder how they do it.

Apparently Dropbox is now gathering more IDs/Data from the system.

Zalima, I did everything (Install Virtual Machines again instead of cloning, Randomize WMP* IDs, Change MAC, Change IP, Use VPN) but still I am getting caught, can you test this method again? Would be great if you could update the post,

you do not need to restart the computer. you may use a physical computer if you can allow it do disconnect from the network, upon changing the mac address. you do not need to reinstall anything or reboot inbetween creating invites, only at the beginning and end. be sure to always log out and exit the programs.

mac address is called "Network Address" in Device Manager (which is what it really is). if that control is not available there, use a different network card or virtual machine.

i don't know if the computer name matters. i changed it to match the username, and definitely didn't modify it in the os, where dropbox pulls it from.

It works 100% and I earned the maximum space i could earn by referrals. i was searching the whole net for an easy way to do this for a long time until i came across this wonderful post. thank you again.

P.s.Don't read the comments and get confused about changing IP and stuff, just follow the instructions by zalima and that's it. It should work.

Thanks. I was wondering how those guys on Fiverr were upgrading those accounts using referrals. Judging by the number of clients they have there's obviously some good money in dropbox referrals, LOL :)

I tried this and I did need to change the Mac address every time I restarted the machine. Not sure why it worked for others without needing to do so, but regardless, a minor inconvenience and I'm all set now.

I do have to change the MAC every time, if not, the referals in not valid and I don't get the extra space. I have to shut down the virtual machine, go the net config, randomize the MAC, restart, download and install the package, register, put the data on the client, and bam! another 500MB extra.

Over all, it takes me around 10 minutes per referal, which is still faster than spamming people, but is not very comfortable.

The Ubuntu CD slowed own the mchien too much, so I picked a live Debian with Gnome from official site. Worked much faster and easir than Ubuntu.

This worked for me two times, but every attempt since has been deemed ineligible. I tried changing the MAC address in the Network settings of virtualbox but apparently that has no effect because the MAC address of the physical computer is hardcoded into the virtual machine and can't be changed. Not sure why this works for some and not for others; wish someone had a working solution for those of us who can't do it. Maybe dropbox has improved their security since the original post.

Follow my instructions above on how to do it quicker without restarting or reinstalling software. I don't know if it _still_ works. My previously beefed up dropboxes still have the space though. My guess is that those memebers who think they didn't change the MAC, actually did it without realizing it.

Nothing is "hardcoded" there. The physical network card has a serial number, but it is not seen by a virtual machine, nor is it transmitted on the wire outside the network. The software on the machine where registration is attempted reads it and sends it as part of its submitted data. It could have used any other number, the serial of a hard drive or whatever.

Follow the instructions and change the address while Dropbox is closed.

Can you pay someone to do it? Like you start up a dropbox account and load it up to 18GB and then email the email and password and details for it in return for payment. I'm just not tech savvy enough to try all that, I can pay for it, but I don't want to pay $100 a year for something I could pay once for... Thanks,Derick.Shull@gmail.com

I tried your directions and they don't seem to work anymore, but you point to all the right tools. I have to shutdown ubuntu each time and generate a random mac address (virtualbox makes it easy). Boot back to the live cd, reinstall dropbox, use your db.tt link. This worked 8 times so far today.

Works, but reverting the VM to snapshot and changing the mac is not sufficient. For me, I also changed the hostname of the VM and gave it a static IP and it worked. Configured VM network settings to NAT, don't think you can change mac or IP in bridged mode.

yeah the same here I generated fake referrals and they all disappeared recently and my space was downgraded... only got a message "Your account has been flagged for referral abuse As much as you love Dropbox, please try not to spam your friends!"

i did this over 6 months ago and had an account with 21 gb for quite some time. today my dropbox shows my account is overfilled. they revoked all the referrals that i had as being suspicous. back to self storing my digital media.

Mine dropped from 24GB to 8GB today yet they removed all of my legitimate Dropbox referrals. I simply installed Dropbox on every new system I built which I didn't think was cheating. Time to 'drop' Dropbox and find a real file sharing company - Dropbox is too lame to support WindowsPhone anyways.

yes will do, so far i'm only half way done. i also mix email signups and referral link signups.

it seems their initial detection upon signup only checks mac and ip. but it does seem to send all your network adapters' mac if you have multiple ones. Not just the one of the active adapter, or the one in use.

I feel sorry for the innocent, but DB really overdid it this time. it's amazing how some DB fanboys mindlessly defend their beloved DB, and accuse everyone who has complained in that thread of cheating, while DB employees hide behind the curtain after a couple of robotic responses.

oh boy sometimes you have to wonder, are those fanboys actually the employees in disguise? or they are simply paid to be a guard dog?

It's a little easier than setting up an ubuntu virtual machine, spoofing mac addresses, and changing IP's. Hopefully Dropbox won't crack down on all of us cheating their referral program. Only time will tell.

I lost my most beefed up account. Curious thing is that I had invitee addresses, such as friend-loves@ friend-the@ friend-dropp friend-box at the start of the list, and I have now received this notice:

"Your account has been flagged for referral abuse. As much as you love Dropbox, please try not to spam your friends!"

It was a giant waste of time. Maybe it wasn't wise to use possibly existing mail addresses, which could be complained from... Anyway, all I have left from the experiment is exactly four invitees on my primary account with a Public directory, and I'm glad I didn't lose that one; and I no longer remember the password to the dummy accounts because I never intended to use them.

I tried Copy. I have tried Mega and CX. And a couple other services that I can longer name.... None of them have the basic webserver functionality that can be achieved with Dropbox's Public directory. I have so far been unable to download anything from Copy because the share window comes empty. Even if that is an error on my end, getting a direct link from this window would be slow at best, and likely impossible.

The basic functionality of me getting my own files through a service is inefficient and not needed. Sharing is what it is for. If I need to get my files, I would log into my computer via FTP and get them. But keeping shares available for the public via an unchanging address is not quite within my means, which is where Dropbox comes in.

Basically, in Dropbox I can tell you to download dropbox.com/number/file1.mp3, and you are free to expand the link to also get file2.mp3, file3.mp3 assuming that they exist, without any shares being generated on my part. Or I can quickly make those links myself. These MP3s can also be streamed down if needed. 2-4 Gigs for this task is quite enough, as long as this space remains available.

But as you can see from my dead link above, FileDen has literally died. These free cloud services will not last in their present form, and I don't have a reason to be strongly disappointed. Just a little.

On step 10 "Use your referral link to sign up for a dropbox account." i don't see that option on the application, its only registration with email and there is no space for entering the referral link, any ideas?

Hi, Now for dropbox referrals we need to use correct email because now dropbox required email verification. Any body help me? I want referrals to get more space by cheat. Any have any cheat to get more space near about 20 GB or more?Please response thank you.